fast as the prejudices of education will permit, to rid ourselves of certain notions of prerogative, and certain feelings of our own superiority, which somehow have been strangely prevalent among our race. For though we have indeed, according to this system, a little more understanding than other animals—can abstract and generalize and forecast events, and the consequences of our actions, and compare motives more skilfully than they: though we have thus more knowledge and can circumvent them; though we have more power and can subdue them; yet, as to any distinctive and peculiar characteristic—as to any inherent and essential worth, we are after all but little better—though we may be better off—than our dogs and horses. There is no essential difference, and we may rationally doubt—at least we might do so, if by the supposition we were rational beings—whether our fellow animals of the kennel and the stall are not unjustly deprived of certain personal rights, and whether a dog charged with trespass may not rationally claim to be tried by a jury of his peers. Now however trifling and ridiculous this may appear, I would ask in truth and soberness, if it be not a fair and legitimate inference from the premises, and whether the absurdity of the one does not demonstrate the utter falsity of the other. And where, I would beg to know, shall we look, according to the popular system of philosophy, for that image of God in which we are created? Is it a thing of degrees? And is it simply because we have something more of the same faculties which belong to brutes, that we become the objects of God's special and fatherly care, the distinguished objects of his Providence, and the sole objects of his Grace?—Doth God take care for oxen? But why not?
I assure my readers, that I have no desire to treat with disrespect and contumely the opinions of great or good men; but the distinction in question, and the assertion and exhibition of the higher prerogatives of reason, as an essential constituent of our being, are so vitally important, in my apprehension, to the formation and support of any rational system of philosophy, and—no less than the distinction before treated of—so pregnant of consequences to the interests of truth, in morals, and religion, and indeed of all truth, that mere opinion and the authority of names may well be disregarded. The discussion, moreover, relates to facts, and to such facts, too, as are not to be learned from the instruction, or received on the authority, of any man. They must be ascertained by every man for himself, by reflection upon the processes and laws of his own inward being, or they are not learned at all to any valuable purpose. We do indeed find in ourselves then, as no one will deny, certain powers of intelligence, which we have abundant reason to believe the brutes possess in common with us in a greater or less degree. The functions of the understanding, as treated of in the popular systems of metaphysics, its faculties of attention, of abstraction, of generalization, the power of forethought and contrivance, of adapting means to ends, and the law of association, may be, so far as we can judge, severally represented more or less adequately in the instinctive intelligence of the higher orders of brutes. But, not to anticipate too far a topic treated of in the Work, do these, or any and all the faculties which we discover in irrational animals, satisfactorily account to a reflecting mind for all the phenomena which are presented to our observation in our own consciousness? Would any supposable addition to the degree merely of those powers which we ascribe to brutes, render them rational beings, and remove the sacred distinction, which law and reason have sanctioned, between things and persons? Will any such addition account for our having—what the brute is not supposed to have—the pure ideas of the geometrician, the power of ideal construction, the intuition of geometrical or other necessary and universal truths? Would it give rise, in irrational animals, to a law of moral rectitude and to conscience—to the feelings of moral responsibility and remorse? Would it awaken them to a reflective self-consciousness, and lead them to form and contemplate the ideas of the soul, of free-will, of immortality, and of God. It seems to me, that we have only to reflect for a serious hour upon what we mean by these, and then to compare them with our notion of what belongs to a brute, its inherent powers and their correlative objects, to feel that they are utterly incompatible—that in the possession of these we enjoy a prerogative which we cannot disclaim without a violation of reason, and a voluntary abasement of ourselves—and that we must therefore be possessed of some peculiar powers—of some source of ideas distinct from the understanding, differing in kind from any and all of those which belong to us in common with inferior and irrational animals.
But what these powers are, or what is the precise nature of the distinction between the understanding and reason, it is not my province, nor have I undertaken, to show. My object is merely to illustrate its necessity, and the palpable obscurity, vagueness, and deficiency, in this respect, of the mode of philosophizing, which is held in so high honour among us. The distinction itself will be found illustrated with some of its important bearings in the Work, and in the notes attached to it; and cannot be too carefully studied—in connection with that between nature and the will—by the student who would acquire distinct and intelligible notions of what constitutes the truly spiritual in our being, or find rational grounds for the possibility of a truly spiritual religion. Indeed, could I succeed in fixing the attention of the reader upon this distinction, in such a way as to secure his candid and reflecting perusal of the Work, I should consider any personal effort or sacrifice abundantly recompensed. Nor am I alone in this view of its importance. A literary friend, whose opinion on this subject would be valued by all who knew the soundness of his scholarship, says in a letter just now received—"if you can once get the attention of thinking men fixed on his distinction between the reason and the understanding, you will have done enough to reward the labour of a life. As prominent a place as it holds in the writings of Coleridge, he seems to me far enough from making too much of it." No person of serious and philosophical mind, I am confident, can reflect upon the subject, enough to understand it in its various aspects, without arriving at the same views of the importance of the distinction, whatever may be his conviction with regard to its truth.
But, indeed, the only grounds which I find, to apprehend that the reality of the distinction and the importance of the consequence resulting from it, will be much longer denied and rejected among us, is in the overweening assurance which prevails with regard to the adequateness and perfection of the system of philosophy which is already received. It is taken for granted, as a fact undisputed and indisputable, that this is the most enlightened age of the world, not only with regard to the more general diffusion of certain points of practical knowledge; in which, probably, it may be so, but in all respects; that our whole system of the philosophy of mind as derived from Lord Bacon, especially, is the only one, which has any claims to common sense; and that all distinctions not recognized in that are consequently unworthy of our regard. What those Reformers, to whose transcendant powers of mind, and to whose characters as truly spiritual divines, we are accustomed to look with feelings of so much general regard, might find to say in favour of their philosophy, few take the pains to inquire. Neither they nor the great philosophers with whom they held communion on subjects of this sort can appear among us to speak in their own defence: and even the huge folios and quartos, in which, though dead, they yet speak—and ought to be heard—have seldom strayed to this side of the Atlantic. All our information respecting their philosophical opinions, and the grounds on which they defended them, has been received from writers, who were confessedly advocating a system of recent growth, at open war with every thing more ancient, and who, in the great abundance of their self-complacency, have represented their own discoveries as containing the sum and substance of all philosophy, and the accumulated treasures of ancient wisdom as unworthy the attention of "this enlightened age." Be it so—yet the foolishness of antiquity, if it be of God, may prove wiser than men. It may be found that the philosophy of the Reformers and their religion are essentially connected, and must stand or fall together. It may at length be discovered that a system of religion essentially spiritual, and a system of philosophy which excludes the very idea of all spiritual power and agency, in their only distinctive and proper character, cannot be consistently associated together.
It is our peculiar misfortune in this country that, while the philosophy of Locke and the Scottish writers has been received in full faith, as the only rational system, and its leading principles especially passed off as unquestionable, the strong attachment to religion, and the fondness for speculation, by both of which we are strongly characterized, have led us to combine